I'm just thinking about all the teachers planning and teaching in bubbles at the moment and wondering if anyone is team planning, collaboratively teaching and/or creating digital content for their learners at different levels - from a distance? Love to hear how this is working?

What do I need right now is perhaps the best question that we can ask ourselves to support our own grounding so we can then support others to get what they need. 

Part of my role as a Positive Psychology practitioner and facilitator for Core education is to support schools in what they need in regards to whole-school wellbeing. With this I had been asked to put together a few ideas around online learning, teachers, parents and wellbeing. A start has been made below which will be added to over time. Please feel free to dip into and share.

Do share in the thread if there is anything you currently find useful about the site.

Your wellbeing school google site.

With this, much aroha from me and my whānau to yours.

As we can't access our libraries at present here are some links to free online sites with reading materiels - most are primary resources. https://bit.ly/IndependentReadOnline

It's a tricky time if we are juggling both our own children at home and also work. For many educators, this is a current reality.

Stressful no doubt and when we do get this way we can revert to type, get very impatient and fault finding particularly with our children.

With this, we would like to invite you to a series of ponderings around how we can support our own children to unlock their potential and strengthen our relationships with them while we have this additional time. This may give us some additional ideas on how we can support the parents of our tāmariki in their home learning spaces.

With this our first video invites us to consider

What are strengths?

How do I recognise a strength?

With this - How quick are you to notice the strengths of your own children? 

You have been doing great. This is for you.

Happy Easter.

The following two quick tips serve up how we can reduce our otherwise stress related responses that we may have. 

Sometimes we may be the voice of calm as leaders (designated or undesignated) trying to support and sooth the stress responses of others. Have you found any other useful ways that work?

CORE's UDL team has created this one pager: Planning learning from home - Key UDL considerations.

Unsurprisingly our key thoughts are similar to those shared by Perry Rush in the NZPF Newsletter today.

Please feel free to use it with your schools if relevant. 

Lynne, Linda and Chrissie  

In this wellbeing bite - 3 quick strategies are served up that offer us kinder ways of tinking that can support us to be in a state of mind that serves us.

What are some of your go to strategies?

Interesting to see Perry Rush (President of New Zealand Principals’ Federation) implore us to consider a new way of working that is far from business as usual and reminds us that,

We are experiencing an international health crisis of a magnitude unheralded in our lifetimes. It has the potential to change the way we live forever. Focusing on keeping teaching and learning going as it always has, is the wrong approach. To do so would be to miss understanding the emotional and psychological impact of this crisis on people…

...It is a time for you to metaphorically wrap your arms around the young people in your care and embrace their families too. https://nzpf.schoolzineplus.com/news?nid=48

Perry Rush also reminds us, Our job at this time is to infuse any home learning plan with a deep sense of humanity and asks us to keep things simple and not to overcomplicate them. For more wellbeing support, please feel free to join, Mental wellness first aid group set up to support us all during this time. 

Once school does start back, how do you plan to keep your families/whānau in mind, as well as yourself? What’s #1 nice way to help you/them manage this different way of working from home?

Image source: Wallpaper Flare

I have curated them in my Google Keep but thought it might be useful to make a doc with them all where others can add blogs they think might be useful. As you add, please supply a short summary of any key information or ideas and who you think an appropriate audience might be - teachers, whānau, students (or any mixture of all three). Then we can decide what information we can use and reference as we develop our own resources.

Please note: If the view below is too difficult to navigate, go straight to the Google doc itself. Please note: To view this doc below in its entirety, click on the 100% (in the document itself) and scroll down to Fit.

Tip #1:

Complete your profile. If your profile is complete - with first and last name, details and an image this will enable others to connect with you more easily.  Once you've done this, sit back and watch the friend requests roll in!

Our moods are contagious, so how can we be better positioned to offer that calmness.

In this short video I share three tips that I often share to support calm. You may have your own go to strategies which we would

love you to share.

I've been having a play with creating an infographic to set out some helpful tips for conducting online learning meetings. Ifg you want to view it in the web - here is the link - https://create.piktochart.com/output/45418159-online-class-guidelines

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Here is my 2 cents worth on what i am doing

i am happy to help anyone in any way

email me or reply on this board if i can help

I am at home like the other 4,812,346 New Zealanders and 70,000+ visitors trying to return home from NZ. I am working on Simulation and modelling COVID19 in NZ to try and work out when we can return to face to face teaching (knohi ki te kanohi) or onsite.

Ministry of Education thought 22 April 2020 but that was a week ago which is a lifetime in a pandemic.

We are using STILE.com which gives us hour by hour minute by minute real-time online interactive contact for lessons, feedback and teaching with all our learners and differentiation on topic, interests, completion, complexity as well as easy access to all learners. We can ask for re submission on any and all questions and have thousands of lessons in  hundreds of topics at multiple levels. We also use Google classroom, zoom, google hangouts, online kamar, shared google drives, g suites and microsoft (but not yet teams though we have done workshops and webinars on that too. We are ready to use online free scipad too but holding back till we see how the physical write and feedback via images works in term 2 from 15 April 2020

Mostly i am fielding Biology 91603 questions and General Science feedback marking and tests and these take many hours a day to give spoken and written feedback on the many lessons and many students - each lesson takes 20 minutes to 30 minutes for students and up to 5 minutes to marka nd feedback but wih 60 students that results ina lot of virtual work

In my down time i am modeling the virus in NZ and running 3 simulation packages from CDC, Imperial college and NZ universities (Auckland Canterbury and Otago) I have the data points tracking Ok daily but the variables can blow out at any time and ruin teh projections and for me the important endpoint for lockdown so i know when i can reschedule internals and topics, lessons and events - like returning to school.

The key factor is the move from social distancing to full lock down as it results in morbidity increases, length of pandemic in NZ and viability, chances and length of time to exterminate/eliminate or control the virus in NZ

cheers tony cairns

Tags include

covid19, covid, coronavirus, offsite learning, digital learning, simmulating COVID19, epidemiology, pandemics, STILE.com, Google classroom, Google Suite, Lockdown, When will it end, Kanohi ki te Kanohi, face to face, 

Music has such a soothing effect on our nervous systems. Music is uplifting and transcends all boundaries. Music has a positive impact on our wellbeing. Anything that boosts our positive emotions, supports us to spiral upwards, boost our immune systems and be a little more flexible in the way we think about things and be more creative.  

What type of music do you like to listen to?

How are you using Book Creator as a teacher or with your students? Have you got some examples to share with the group?

Seesaw has a variety of webinars happening to support schools , teachers and administrators 

- remote learning for those new to Seesaw and already using Seesaw

- creating activities for home learning

- Live Q&A sessions 

Also self paced resources are here - 

Remote learning for teachers already using Seesaw 

Remote learning of you are new to Seesaw 

Further remote learning information and tips and trips 

“ …a state of wellbeing in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and be able to make a contribution to her or his community”

Like physical health, we can all benefit from looking after our mental health

In the video below we explore a useful framework which is used in training mental health first aiders with the twist of incorporating all the key wellbeing features that research informs us that are really good for us.

Our pondering is - are there any of those pillars that you are really good at?

Bearhunt Map Link

It's also a good introduction for maps for teachers. I was also thinking how the bears could be great story prompts for kids. They could create a photo story of the bears they see, create a video, invent  characters, write a 'bear diary',  what journey has the bear been on, which countries has it visited?

Any other thoughts of areas of the curriculum or activities that this could lead to?